Learning, Inc. is an educational software and hardware company co-founded in 1999 by Texas businessman Neil Bush[1] and a year later Ken Leonard.
[3] A foundation linked to Reverend Sun Myung Moon donated $1 million for a research project by the company in Washington, D.C.-area schools.
entered into a partnership with a Mexican company, Grupo Carso to outsource many software and product development functions.
[5] Deceased Russian billionaire expatriate Boris Berezovsky had been an investor in Bush's Ignite!
[6] In March 2006, Leonard said that in the past six to eight months, the company had hired national sales representatives across the country — in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — in order to significantly expand beyond Texas.
Learning website, three different COW models are available: Science, Social Studies, and a "SuperCOW" that contains both curricula.
"They're new entrants in the market," says Keith Kruger of the Consortium for School Networking, "but from what I know, it's a serious product based on some good research."
[6] In 2004, an HISD-funded external evaluation of Ignite Learning found that teachers gave an older version of the product generally positive marks.
[15] In August 2006, Alamo Junior High Principal Jeff Horner said he first saw COWs at a Texas Association of School Boards convention in Austin.
Among the points of his speech, he opined: "We create these prisonlike environments, then we take our hunter-warrior types and label them attention-deficit disordered and put them on drugs.
In February 2004, the Houston school board agreed to accept $115,000 in charitable donations from businesses and individuals who specified the money be spent on Ignite's learning programs.
[7] In early 2006, Ignite Learning announced that Barbara Bush had donated funds to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund (a charity established by former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton), with instructions that the money be used to purchase "COWs" ("Curriculum on Wheels") from Ignite!
[16] In August 2006, Neil Bush visited Alamo Junior High School, the 1,000th customer of Ignite!